Yes, I know it’s January 17th or whatever. It’s been a hellish two weeks. Would you like to hear about them? No? I’m telling you anyway. I was on a pitch, a global pitch. I had meetings with various European offices here in NY, as well as South American offices and Asian offices. Every one of them had sections of the Keynote deck they needed designed. I would meet with each office, incorporate their pages, then meet with the heads of the pitch, make their changes, back and forth and back and forth. THEN, when everything was hunky-dory a major not-to-be-meddled-with executive would come in and change everything on this 120-page document, causing me to have to stay up all damn night to make those changes. It was like this for two weeks. It got so intense I ended up getting a hotel room across the street from the office so I could grab four or five hours of sleep everyday with a minimal commute. The rest of the time was spent working. In my 12 years of being in the advertising industry this was one of the top five most stressful pitches I’ve been involved with. However it is now finished and I can return to my life of watching the Discovery Channel and writing blog entries. Let’s start with what I did on New Year’s Day. I have always wanted to do the Coney Island Polar Plunge. It’s held on New Year’s Day and people run into the ocean off of the Coney Island Beach in Brooklyn. Since I went to the Oase in Germany last year and had ice water thrown at my naked flesh I feel like I am emotionally and physically prepared to engage with the Atlantic. It wasn’t a coincidence that I picked this year because it was warm. Well, the air was 46 degrees and the water was about the same so maybe “warm” is the incorrect term, but glacier-like it was not. I was not aware that it is a charity event so I was delighted that my entry fee went to a camp for children with cancer. The theme is “freezin’ for a reason”. We arrived very early so we could be the first group in the ocean (so many people show up they space out the plunges). The police were cordoning off the beach and it totally looked like they had found body parts a là Dexter.
We headed out to where we decided we would park our stuff and waited for our cue. A ton of people showed up to cheer on and/or mock the plungers.
It started with a person in a full polar bear costume entering the ocean surrounded by women in bikinis playing trumpets. I would expect nothing else from Coney Island.
And then we were told to line up. We stripped down to our bathing suits and went in. It was surprisingly not bad. I was surprised. I thought the cold water or the cold air would hurt but it didn’t. I would describe it as “excessively refreshing.”
Afterwards we went for Russian food in the Brighton Beach area. Nothing warms the cold toesies like cherry dumplings and hot tea served in glass cups. I don’t know if I would ever do this again but I definitely would encourage others to because it’s a fun convivial atmosphere and it’s nice that it raises money for a good cause. I give it two shivery thumbs up.
Addendum: Here’s a super-cool picture of Coney Island from above.
